1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, system, and computer program product for the automated selection of functions to reduce storage capacity based on performance requirements.
2. Background
Many features that are deployed in storage systems aim to reduce business costs. For example, data reduction or free space reclamation may be used to reduce the need for storage capacity. In certain situations, such features may be deployed via thin provisioning in which free space is reclaimed, via deduplication in which multiple references may be maintained to a single data stream, or via data compression in which data is reduced by applying either lossy or lossless compression mechanisms.
In thin provisioning a storage volume may be defined but storage space may be allocated for the storage volume only when write operations are performed to the storage volume. In data duplication only a single copy of a set of duplicate data may be maintained and pointers may be maintained such that the locations at which the original duplicate data was stored can be determined. In data compression lossy compression may cause a greater reduction in storage requirements in comparison to lossless compression. It may be noted that storage space requirements may be reduced via thin provisioning, via data duplication, and via data compression. In contrast to thin provisioning, data duplication, or data compression that reduce storage space requirements, a fully allocated volume may not have any thin provisioning, data duplication, or data compression, and may not reduce storage space requirements.